Pixar Ranking for 2011

Ranking Pixar movies is like deciding which oyster is the tastiest. Or if you’re not into shellfish, which tropical vacation spot has the best sand. All 11 of the animation house’s feature films (the 12th, “Cars 2,” arrives in theaters June 24) are very good.

Most of them are fantastic. The “Toy Story” trilogy is the “Godfather” of animation — without any weaknesses. (The third “Godfather” introduced the world to Sofia Coppola’s Mary Corleone, while the third “Toy Story” brought us Ken. No contest.) Still, as the Emeryville, Calif.-based creative giant celebrates its 25th anniversary in business in 2011, we decided to attempt a ranking.

Would the old adage about getting better with age apply? Was there an adolescent slump? Does “A Bug’s Life” have a shot at the gold? Read on, and remember, being at the bottom of this list is not an insult. Just as something has to be seventh on the list of Seven Wonders of the World, something has to be the least wonderful Pixar movie.

11. “Cars” (2006):

This homage to life on Route 66 is as good as any movie featuring inanimate, man-made objects talking, tipping over tractors and falling in love could possibly be. But it works — it absolutely works — I can’t deny it. The fact that giving voice to gruff vintage racecar Doc Hudson was Paul Newman’s last film role gives “Cars” a special ‘je ne sais quoi’, but something had to be last on this list. There’s an element of crassness about “Cars” that sets it apart from the other Pixar films.

10. “The Incredibles” (2004):

The premise — superheroes are thwarted by our ultra-litigious society, defrocked and forced into hiding in the suburbs — is such genius that I kind of lost my taste for all other flicks featuring superheroes with angst. Nothing seemed quite as smart or fresh. Yet I was hard on “The Incredibles” when I first saw it back in the fall of 2004, which is to say, I gave it, you know, a B or something. I thought its explosive beginning (and end) was too violent, too standard-fare action flick, especially in comparison to the fluid beauty of “Nemo” and the cuddle factor of “Monsters, Inc.” Figuring that having a 6-month-old baby at home when this came out might have made me hypersensitive.

9. “A Bug’s Life” (1998):

Pixar’s second feature has a tendency to get forgotten, maybe because it’s such an offbeat underdog story (also, it had the misfortune of hitting theaters the month after DreamWorks’ animated “Antz”). A colony of ants, long held in virtual slavery by a crew of bullying grasshoppers, inadvertently get roped into staging a cautious rebellion. The ants are a little too traditionally cute (Hayden Panettiere was a child when she voiced baby ant Dot), but all that preciousness is neatly offset by a troupe of jaded performing circus bugs, hired to help defeat the grasshoppers.

8. “Toy Story 2” (1999):

Woody lands in the clutches of a sweaty, salivating man-boy toy collector who plans to sell him and his matched-set Wild West colleagues to a Japanese museum. After being rescued by Woody in the first movie, Buzz now needs to rescue the sheriff. So maybe it’s not wildly original to have them essentially swap roles, but the material still feels fresh. The toy collector is a perfectly rendered obsessive. And then there is Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack). Her pain and suffering over being left in a box for donation by the girl who once loved her is so compelling it is no wonder the screenwriters returned to explore toy abandonment issues more thoroughly in “Toy Story 3” a full decade later.

7. “Monsters, Inc.” (2004):

The premise validates children while emboldening and liberating them. Scared of the dark? Convinced there are monsters in the closet? There absolutely are: big hairy purple ones, even. But they’re not there to cause harm; they’re just collecting the shrieking energy of boys and girls in order to supply energy for an alt-universe for Monsters. And the truth is, they are terrified of children, too. The construction is beautiful, the voice work by Billy Crystal and John Goodman is superb, so why not higher on the list? Unlike most Pixar movies, this one seems to have less longevity on the playlist.

6. “Finding Nemo” (2003):

Go to an aquarium, any well-stocked aquarium, in the world. Stand next to the tank with clown fish in it. Wait 30 seconds. A child will crow “Nemo!” or “Marlin” in great delight. Guaranteed. And I bet that will continue happening as long as there are DVD players, children and aquariums. There are three main reasons why “Nemo” can’t be anywhere near the bottom of this list. First, the combination of grumpy Albert Brooks and gently idiotic Ellen DeGeneres is so deliciously “Odd Couple.” Then there are those lush underwater sequences, generated by artists who did their ocean research. Finally, other than the howling fit I threw at Bambi as a child, “Nemo” was the first animated movie that made me cry.

5. “Toy Story” (1995):

The first Pixar full-length feature is still in the top five. It’s really “The Velveteen Rabbit” of movies. There is a beautiful simplicity in its conception: Children believe that all their toys, whether favored or left at the bottom of the toy chest, have feelings, personalities and real interactions, and Pixar makes it so. The central conflict, between a toy that is tried and true (Woody) and one that is new and glitzy (Buzz Lightyear, who also happens to be plastic) is classic and timeless in nature, but also provocative. It makes kids think, about what they love and how they love it.

4. “Up” (2009):

Here’s the surprise for me. I thought I’d be rearranging the top three on this list for days, and that “Up,” with its fantasy of a flying house with a sad (let’s face it, suicidal) old man locked inside it would be one of those top three. It’s that “Married Life” infertility sequence that gets me every time — the most soulful and stirring four minutes in Pixar’s history. The fact that there are filmmakers both sensitive enough to come up with this material and daring enough to include it in this “kids” movie still shocks me.

3. “Ratatouille” (2007):

This is the movie that convinced me the Pixarians can do anything. They put rats and food together and no one wanted to vomit. Amazing, not? And we’re not talking about a cute Mickey Mouse rodent; Remy is a full-on rat who sups, albeit reluctantly, on garbage. But he dreams big — he wants to be a chef — and against all odds, it happens. The pointed inspirational message is, don’t be held back by where you come from, even if it’s a sewer.

2. “Toy Story 3” (2010):

I felt I knew Buzz and Woody plenty well enough already. I step on one of them at least once a week. Whatever they got up to in the third installment of the franchise would be fun, I assumed. Good clean fun. But there I was, tears pouring down my face as the toys headed for that incinerator. Going, going — are they really going to do it? Is Pixar going to throw this wildly popular posse of toys into the flames? They’re bold, after all. And I was ready to trust them, to believe that Woody burned to a crisp would somehow serve the franchise right. But the plan was to take us to the brink and then back to a kinder place, wrapping this whole saga in bittersweet truths about moving forward while passing the good things on to others. Does that sound saccharine? If it does, just take a look at scary, funny amazing Big Baby, the creepiest character of the year. Oh damn, should this have been No. 1?

1. “WALL-E” (2008):

No, that honor has to go to Pixar’s masterpiece. The Pixar filmmakers often seem to be on a mission to remind us that life is beautiful. But in this futuristic depiction of a trash-littered, storm-scorched toxic earth, life is all but gone, except for a cockroach and a sapling. Life has been unsustainable on earth for 700 years; we’re centuries past the misery of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” The only beauty lies in the eye of the mechanical beholder, the charming robot WALL-E. The universe does contain some humans, hideously bloated and floating around in the Love Boat of the sky. Talk about a clear message: We humans, with our whole Buy and Large culture, are destroying the earth. This radical movie is Pixar’s best. But you know, the filmmakers there always have something new in the pipeline. Anyone want to take bets on next year’s “Brave”? SOURCE: Mary Pols for MSN Movies.